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| Credit foto: Traci Ardren (University of Miami)/ Proyecto Sacbe Yacuna-Coba/ Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative |
The road was built about 1,000 years ago.
In the 1930s, scientists at the Carniege Archaeological Institute in Washington discovered a road connecting the cities of Cobá and Yaxuná in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Due to the materials used to build roads in this region, they were called "white roads", and the reason for their existence fascinated researchers.
A recent study, in which excavations were used but also aerial observations with the help of lidar, three-dimensional scanning with the help of laser, brings new evidence related to who ordered its construction. Travis Stanton, an archaeologist at the University of California Riverside, explains that the road was most likely ordered by K'awiil Ajaw, a warrior Mayan queen who ruled Cobá more than 1,000 years ago. Live Science.
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| Maya warrior queen may have built the longest 'white road' Live Science |
"Given the warlike nature of its monuments, it is possible that it was the leader who extended the road to extend his control to Yaxuná," explains Stanton.
Scientists who have studied the material culture of the Mayan civilization explain that these "white roads" were common throughout their territory, but that between Cobá and Yaxuná is the longest and has been a massive logistical effort, both in terms of time, but also of resources.
"We tend to interpret them as a kind of activity that presents the power of a political regime, or at least the alliance between two centers of power," said Traci Ardren, an archaeologist at the University of Miami.
A complicated political situation
Historians believe that Cobá's invasion of Yaxuná was caused by an increase in the military and political power of a third city: Chichen Itza. This city was about 23 kilometers from Yaxuna and, according to archaeological evidence, this city was the main political force in the center of the Yucatan Peninsula.
The death of Queen K'awiil Ajaw was followed by the decline of the military and political power of the city of Cobá. Arden explains that Cobá was a city in which only one family had a monopoly on political power, which means that the increase or decrease of influence in the region depended, to a large extent, on a strong central figure. Instead, Chichen Itza was, according to archaeological evidence, a more decentralized state, with several centers of power that stretched throughout.
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